13S SEA FOWL IN NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 



pebbles,' just as the Carboniferous Conglomerates of the Cobe- 

 quid mountains iD Nova Scotia are the obvious secondary source 

 of many of the rounded boulders and pebbles of Syenite, Diorite 

 and Porphyries which are found in our post pliocene drift. 



The Jasper pebbles are supposed to come from the post-pliocene, 

 so that they may have come from Gaspe. 



Gypsum was once an article of export to Canada. It is not 

 now exported ; Nova Scotian Gypsum is preferred. 



Art. III. — On the Semi-Annual Migration of Sea Fowl in 

 Nova Scotia. — By J. Bernard Gilpin, A. B., M. D., 

 M. R. C. S. 



{Read March 15, 1S80.) 

 In this paper I wish to call the attention of the Institute to 

 that part of the great semi-annual migration of sea fowl which 

 passes the whole eastern coast of North America, belonging to 

 the coasts of Nova Scotia ; of the separate genera and species 

 of which it is composed ; of the monthly periods of their pass- 

 ing ; and of the modifications both in time, in frequency and in 

 species, which advancing civilization has produced. From the 

 earliest writers and voyagers, not only along the New England 

 coasts, but also of our own Province, we notice mention of these 

 migrations, and are amazed by their numbers, darkening the air 

 and blackening the shores along which they passed. With no 

 enemy save those natural ones, which the economy of nature 

 always provides, they passed north and south without fear or 

 molestation. For the last three hundred years an advancing 

 population at almost every point on their passage, from Labrador 

 to Florida, has thinned their numbers, altered their route, and 

 perhaps, in one or two instances, changed their route entirely or 

 destroyed a species. The small part which the shores of our 

 Province of Nova Scotia take in these migrations, or indeed the 

 still smaller part that has come beneath my own pei'sonal obser- 

 vation, aided by one or two friends, will be the subject of this 

 paper. 



List of water fowl and sea fowl personally noticed in Nova 



